DAZ Studio 4.5 RC 3 Is Now Available for Download

This build is available to all customers and will run either without a serial number (you will be asked to enter one each time you launch the application until you do), or with your current DAZ Studio 4.x serial number. Installing DAZ Studio 4.5 RC3 will uninstall any previous installations of DAZ Studio 4.x, and we recommend running only one version of DAZ Studio 4.x on the same machine.

The purpose of this build is to provide users with early access to new features and bug fixes that are only available in DAZ Studio 4.5. This build is a Release Candidate, which means we are looking for prompt feedback about significant issues that may still exist in this build as we approach the General Release. To help our Quality Assurance and Software Development teams, please focus any reports you make on issues that are significant blocks, crashes or other "show-stopper" caliber issues, rather than requesting new features, user interface and/or workflow changes.

New in DAZ Studio 4.5:
1. Full implementation of the DSON file format specification - This enables saving scenes in a lightweight format that can be loaded and used by anyone who has installed the products used in the scene. If one or more of the assets used in the scene are not found while the scene is loading, a simple preview is inserted into the scene in its place and a dialog is displayed indicating which files are needed to load the scene in its entirety.
2. Selectively save parts of a scene - Save only those items in the scene that you choose, rather than having to remove items from the scene before saving. Then, easily drop that scene subset into another scene using lightweight DSON format files.
3. Viewport speed dramatically increased - For many interactions, viewport speed will be 2-5 times faster than DAZ Studio 4.0.
4. Load and use most Poser format files as if they were native DSON files - Scenes that are constructed using items loaded from Poser format files and then saved to the DSON format, are also sharable; they maintain references to the required Poser files, rather than the contents of those files.
5. Consolidated viewing/editing of Property Settings - The Property Settings dialog now consolidates more editable information about each property into a single interface; e.g. Presentation Editor, Controllers, Sub-Components, Keys, etc.
6. FBX Import - FBX files can now be round-tripped through DAZ Studio, including rigged and animated items in the scene.
7. "Darkside" style is now included - You no longer need to download and install this style separately, it is included as part of the standard installation.
8. Relaxed serial number requirements - No serial number is required to run either the 32-bit or 64-bit versions of DAZ Studio Standard Edition.
9. Shader Mixer improvements - Shader Mixer has significantly improved workflow and documentation.
10. New "Ready to Render" scenes - New scenes that are "Ready to Render" have been added as part of the content that installs with 4.5. Loading these is a great way to start tweaking and playing with some cool scenes.
11. Lesson Strip - We've added quick lessons about DAZ Studio basics. There are also instructions on how to create your own Lessons on the Documentation Center.

Along with many new features in DAZ Studio 4.5, you will also find new documentation on some of the deeper functionality in DAZ Studio on the Documentation Center in the Publishing and DAZ Studio sections.

If you find any serious issues please report them with as much detail as you can in the DAZ Issue Tracker.

What you need to know about this build:
1. Many, many issues and workflow improvements have been addressed since we released 4.0.3.47. Too many to list here. Please see the DAZ Studio 4.5 Change Log and the DAZ Issue Tracker for more detail.
2. Files saved from this version of DAZ Studio are NOT backward compatible with older versions, including version 4.0.x.
3. Plugins that run in version 4.0.x will not run in version 4.5 without being updated by their respective developers. Many of the plugins developed by DAZ 3D are included in the download(s), but may still require a purchased serial number to unlock.
4. When installing the plugins that come with DAZ Studio, you may see warning dialogs indicating there was a problem with installation. These warnings do not affect installation, but we are addressing the warnings in a later build.
5. Not all features of FBX are supported on import, so characters from other 3D applications imported in FBX format may or may not come through with all their components.
6. All newly saved presets are recorded in the lightweight DUF format and script based presets (DSA/DSB/DSE files) have been deprecated. Many of the script based save presets can still be saved and will load, but the new preset format should be used in their place.
7. The deprecated .DAZ scene format can still be read, but the option to save to this format has been removed; too many crashes were being caused by the use of an area of the application that has been deprecated and will not be developed further.
8. Support for Poser format content that makes use of Propagating Scale and/or Dependent Parameters (valueOpKey) has been updated. This can cause the behavior of items that use these features to change.
9. The 3Delight render engine included with DAZ Studio 4.5 has been updated to coincide with the current public standalone version (10.0.50). This may cause some compiled third party shaders to require an update. Shaders that were compiled using the tools provided in DAZ Studio 4 should already be compatible with both DAZ Studio 4 and 4.5. These shaders should automatically recompile at render-time, but will warn that the shader should be recompiled to improve performance. Shaders built using Shader Mixer are not subject to the change and should continue to function without an update.
10. We would suggest that in order to use the PW Shaders you should reset your downloads to get the latest version to run with DAZ Studio 4.5 RC3.

Thank you for helping us make DAZ Studio great!

You can get this version here:
If you already have the DAZ Studio 4.5 RC (1 or 2) you can simply reset your download to receive the new files.

If this is your first time downloading DAZ Studio 4.5 RC's then simply follow the link below to add this to your cart.

Could it be that the individual products where updated but not the bundle?
Or does this work different in the "new" store?

Since the change to the new store forum I was not really motivated to post anymore so here some things that now after months still seem missing:

Offtopic A)

I really miss to see in the download list the dates on which files were updated.

Offtopic B)

I have currently 1073 items in my order history. As a workaround I choose that 50 are displayed per page. It is still annoying to have to skip page by page until finally the needed download shows up. Any solution to speed up the process of updating files by lowering the time to get to the files one needs would be very much appreciated. For DS 5.0 my biggest wish would still be to get an (optional for those who like it) automatic update system for all installed software, shaders and content (!).

Offtopic C)
In December 2011 some member with a DAZ label in front of his name posted an image with a truck rendered with an Area light and announced that we have great things to look forward to: In DS 4.1 render speed would be 50% faster. What happend to that? Or is that render speed increase included in item 9) "The 3Delight render engine included with DAZ Studio 4.5 has been updated"?

Offtopic D
This is the 3rd RC now. Is there any chance the team responsible for GenX can be motivated to update it? Are the changes you are doing now to the 4.5 version still affecting those plugins?

In any way thanks for the work put in DS 4.5. So far I like the new file formats and I am under the impression that working with the viewport, loading and saving scenes and figures is now much faster.

Question -- are file references in objects now case-sensitive? I ran into a situation, where I had an UV-set named with non-capitalized form, and the file referred to it in capitalized form; let's call the file as default.dsf and reference as Default.dsf. I renamed the file, and ta-dah, everything was working again. In RC2, the file had worked just fine.

I'm still getting problems during installation with this version. Again, when installing the bundled plugins, each one will ask to uninstall the previous version, but almost all of them will uninstall the wrong plugin, (Decimator uninstalls the Dynamic Clothing, for example), the only one that uninstalls correctly is the Bridge for PS. So far, to avoid the plugins uninstalling other plugins I just installed, I'm simply overwriting the installation without uninstalling at all.

Oh dear. I fear this will get messy. While I'm 100% behind with exact file names and paths etc (since I have strong Unix/Linux background), the sad fact is that on Windows case-sensitivity is one of those things that happen to other people. Maybe this needs to be looked at?

Also tried to render an Image Series as .png with no Background (alpha), got the stock blue instead. I've tried different things, still with the same problem. It will render 1 image fine, but image series ends up with BG color ??

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but is it correct behavior for 4.5 to prompt me to give my file a name every time I save? I am using the Mac 64-bit version of RC3. I noticed it in RC2 as well.

In the 4.0 versions, DAZ would ask me to name the file the first time I saved in any session, even if it was a pre-existing file that I had just opened, and would remind me that I was about to overwrite a pre-existing file. Then on subsequent saves, it would just immediately save without any prompts. This was atypical compared to most applications, but fine.
Now, it asks me to type in the name for the file on every save, and there's not even the current file name offered in the name field to help speed things, it's simply blank, as if I'm creating the document for the very first time, every time.

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but is it correct behavior for 4.5 to prompt me to give my file a name every time I save? I am using the Mac 64-bit version of RC3. I noticed it in RC2 as well.

In the 4.0 versions, DAZ would ask me to name the file the first time I saved in any session, even if it was a pre-existing file that I had just opened, and would remind me that I was about to overwrite a pre-existing file. Then on subsequent saves, it would just immediately save without any prompts. This was atypical compared to most applications, but fine.
Now, it asks me to type in the name for the file on every save, and there's not even the current file name offered in the name field to help speed things, it's simply blank, as if I'm creating the document for the very first time, every time.

You will be prompted the same as if you had clicked File > Save As > Scene... each time you File > Save... unless the scene is identified as being previously saved by "you." This is to help in preventing users from saving over the top of source scenes provided by someone else - i.e. "Ready to Render" scenes provided by DAZ 3D and/or Published Artists as part of a product/promo.

When you save, the information in Edit > Preferences... > General > Authorship Information: > Edit... is saved into the top of the scene file as the author of that file. If the Name: field in the Authorship Information dialog is empty, that empty value is saved as the author of the scene - i.e. it has no author. If a scene has no author, or "you" are not the author, you will be prompted. If however, the name for the author of the scene matches the name you have entered into the Authorship Information dialog, the save action will actually perform a Save rather than a Save As... because it then assumes you know that you are modifying a scene "you" made.